Godzilla (1954): Favourite Films Series

Godzilla (1954): Favourite Films Series

 

Recently, Godzilla turned seventy years old. In his most recent film roles, he has teamed up with King Kong in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire—the sixth American Godzilla production (fifth in the ongoing MonsterVerse series)—and even won the franchise’s first Oscar with Godzilla Minus One. Seven decades after Japan’s most famous movie star rose from the depths of the sea we are all still talking about it. The name GODZILLA is still on posters, kids still play with Godzilla toys, and the films still bring in millions of dollars at the box office. How incredible is that? Well, for this life-long fan, it’s pretty incredible.

My Godzilla Collection, circa 2018

I have written about Godzilla on this blog probably more than any of my other favourite film franchises—and yet, after thirty entries in my Favourite Films Series, I'm only now finally covering the one that started it all. On my 30^th birthday I disclosed to a large assemblage of my friends, family, and peers that Godzilla is not actually up there as one of my all-time favourite movies. This was met with total outrage, to put it lightly. “How could it not be? You’re obsessed with Godzilla! You talk about it constantly!”

Much of my Godzilla discourse, on this blog in particular, is largely happenstance. My blog started mere months before the MonsterVerse was born with 2014’s Godzilla reboot, and after that second Hollywood attempt at adapting the creature for modern American audiences proved to be a hit, Toho rebooted their own Godzilla series two years later, then the MonsterVerse continued, and Toho doled out a trilogy of animated films, an anime TV series, and yet another reboot right alongside. The quantity of new Godzilla movies and shows has never been higher. Not even when Toho was at its peak with releasing a new movie every year was there this much Godzilla content to consume. Naturally, I have checked it all out, and more often than not, had plenty to say about it.

Now it’s time to look back and reflect on the movie that launched a franchise like no other. When I say Godzilla isn’t up there as an all-time favourite, I mean that I wouldn’t put the original (or any other movie bearing the name Godzilla) in my top ten favourite movies. Were I to expand the list into the top 30 and beyond, there would definitely be a couple spots filled by Godzilla. My second Favourite Films entry was Godzilla 2000, which was the first Godzilla movie I ever saw (and a little note about this CCC blog series: I have not been covering my favourite films in any particular order). I first rented Godzilla 2000 from the video store and saw it again on TV not long after, but I had heard there were more Godzilla movies, and the video store did not represent the true breadth of the series. There was the 1998 American version, which I also rented multiple times, and one other: Godzilla 1985. That one was alright, but the tape was so worn out that our VCR actually ate the tape at the end of the movie. For those too young to know how VHS works, it’s exactly like it sounds: the tape came off the spools and got tangled around the turning heads and my mom had to fish it out with a pen. I didn’t see Godzilla 1985 again until I obtained my own (working) VHS copy in the mid-2010s, over a decade later.

I was eight years old; I knew what Godzilla was, I knew I loved it, and I wanted more, but I had no idea just how many Godzilla’s were out there. Most of them were not available in North America, though. I wanted all I could get, and as far as I could tell at the video store, the 1998 American version, which just bore the title Godzilla, was about the best there was. Oh, how I was so, so wrong. When asked what I wanted for Christmas that year, I said I wanted Godzilla, meaning the ’98 film, but what I got was a VHS tape of a different, much older film I had never heard of before. Going back to Godzilla 1985 for a minute, I learned many years after the VCR tape-eating incident that the movie I had seen was an Americanized version of the original Japanese one (more commonly known as The Return of Godzilla, which had actually come out in 1984 in Japan), and the Americanized version of the 1954 original is what I ended up getting in my stocking that Christmas I asked for Godzilla.

I guess this could technically be considered two entries in my Favourite Films Series, since Godzilla, King of the Monsters! was released in 1956 and is distinct enough from the Japanese original that it can be considered a separate film. I don’t know what percentage of footage remains the same between both versions, but the biggest change is having the whole story shifted to an American character’s point of view. It's interesting to consider from a modern perspective when that kind of thing just doesn’t happen anymore—and it's probably for the best that such a tactic is now a thing of the past. In comparison, King of the Monsters! essentially pares down the same great scenes by having Raymond Burr’s character Steve Martin, a news reporter, inserted into them, providing expository commentary for the audience. The matching of new footage to old is, admittedly, quite impressive, and as a kid, I had no clue body doubles had been used and all the new footage had been shot in just a matter of days.

Looking back, I’m glad I saw King of the Monsters! first when I was so young, because even though it waters down the Japanese version and makes it into more of what I now think of as a typical B-monster movie, it still maintains some of the dark tone and many of the haunting visuals. I didn’t mind that it was black-and-white, because it actually gave it more of a horror movie look and feel. The narration from Burr, plus his interactions with the Japanese characters, helped orient me in the story, and when Godzilla attacked Tokyo in the devastating centrepiece of the film (which remains consistent across both versions), his stressed, sweating reportage helped sell how real it all felt. Sure, some of the visual effects tricks were easy to figure out even as a kid, but I remember feeling an undeniable sense of dread in the buildup to Godzilla making landfall, and those shots of his large, staring eyes as he mercilessly tore the city apart and set it ablaze freaked me out and fascinated me in equal measure. A big part of that dread and excitement is also a byproduct of the score by Akira Ifukube.

I still enjoy the Americanized version, mainly for nostalgic reasons, but when I finally saw the original uncut Japanese version with English subtitles over a decade later, I realized what I had really been missing. It starts with only the heavy, booming footsteps of the unseen monster, the Japanese title scrolling up into the middle of the screen, then Godzilla’s uniquely chilling roar rips through the speakers, and we get the iconic “Godzilla March” music. Even though Godzilla, King of the Monsters! has a pretty similar opening with the title superimposed over a shot of the ocean (done up in a cheesy monster movie font), it doesn’t build the same kind of suspense with music and simplistic titles before opening on the ship at sea that gets hit with Godzilla’s radiation. From here, the steady build up to Godzilla’s reveal is grim, convincing, and remorseless.

King of the Monsters! transposes most of the original into a flashback narrative, which is done in an acceptable way, though doesn’t exactly enhance the story. To be clear, it’s not as if my favourite shots or favourite music queues are lost between the two versions, but the Japanese version is obviously the one the original creative team intended for all audiences to see, and it is more overtly an anti-nuclear cautionary tale. Many fans (including longtime/lifetime fans) declared Godzilla Minus One the best Godzilla movie of all-time, and I think those fans felt justified when it won that Oscar, which is fair enough. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I am of the other less-but-still-popular opinion that Godzilla Minus One is the best Godzilla movie since the original, but not better. My reasoning is Godzilla (1954) does three things more perfectly than any other Godzilla movie in the franchise’s seventy-year history:

1) It gets the story right. This is a post-WWII-Japan that has never seen the likes of a giant, radioactive creature pulled out of prehistory and revived for the atomic age, and the way it begins as a mystery to be revealed before shifting into a full-on horror-disaster, and finally drawing to a tragic, haunting conclusion, is expertly done. It is paced perfectly, it is streamlined to such a fine point it directly hits the target of what it is trying to do and say, and there really is nothing that doesn’t work in terms of the story structure.

2) It gets the characters right. One major strength the original has over the Americanized version is the development of four characters in particular: Ogata, Emiko, Dr. Serizawa, and Emiko’s father, Dr. Yamane. In King of the Monsters!, the dynamics between them are stripped down to make room for Raymond Burr and connections are forced between him and Emiko/Serizawa. In the original, the four of them are at the center of the story, and two of them are men of science. Dr. Yamane is fascinated with Godzilla, and laments the beast’s necessary destruction, but then Dr. Serizawa is a tortured soul because he invented the Oxygen Destroyer (like Godzilla himself, this device is also something of a metaphor for the nuclear bomb) but he comes to realize he must use it to destroy the greatest threat Japan has ever faced. Ogata complicates Serizawa’s relationship with Emiko, and all of these characters are at the center of the story. It’s not Godzilla’s movie. He is the catalyst for all of these characters to go through conflicts, trials and tribulations, changes, and sacrifices.

3) It gets the tone right. No other Godzilla movie, no matter how creative the story might be, or how endearing the characters may be (rare), or how serious it may take itself (rarer), has duplicated the pitch perfect tone of the black-and-white original. I saw Godzilla, King of the Monsters! at a time when I did not realize the Godzilla series was primarily known for goofy monster battles and effects that often looked fake. All I had to go off was that one time Godzilla fought a space monster (2000), that other time he was defeated by getting knocked into a volcano (1985), and the time the more lizard-like one attacked New York City (1998 American version). Even to this day, the handful of Godzilla films I would deem “serious” have not duplicated or superseded the 1954 film’s unfaltering commitment to making something conceptually outlandish seem as believably scary as possible even with effects that are not always completely convincing. By comparison, even the movies that have tried to nail the campy, fun tone, like Godzilla: Final Wars or King Kong vs. Godzilla, did not nail their respective tones as well as Godzilla 1954 did.

I don’t think I need to reiterate what has been reiterated countless times about the metaphor Godzilla represents for nuclear fears and the lasting impact it has had on not just monster movies but Japanese cinema and the sci-fi/horror genre as a whole. What my intention for my Favourite Films Series has always been is to give my own perspective on films I consider favourites and provide something that hasn’t been said a thousand times. It’s more difficult with films like this that are so well known and have been around for so long, but what I find fascinating is to look back on my time as a Godzilla fan, from the earliest days right up to today, and see how my real love for this character was born out of watching the original (both versions). For all the hilarious, joyful, and stupefying versus films Godzilla has been in, the grittier, more meaningful films are why the character endures. I think that’s the reason Godzilla Minus One really resonated with people, because like the original, it is what Godzilla has always really been about: the way people face a singular giant monster—something so large and terrifying it defies comprehension—and the way they rise up to survive, no matter the cost. 

 

Related: Godzilla in Hollywood http://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2024/03/godzilla-in-hollywood-part-1.html